Community Cin(ma)

Posted: Thursday, March 29, 2007

When I was a kid, my big brother and his friend leased out a rundown 1930s-era movie theater called the Naro in a dead-ish section of Norfolk, Va. to show films by a favorite filmmaker (Ingmar Bergman) and see if anyone would come.

They did. The lease extended to years, with the theater featuring art, foreign and specialty films. My dad thought my brother was crazy for sinking his hard-earned engineering degree from Georgia Tech into running an artsy movie theater. But by the early '80s, that section of town, called Ghent, was thriving with cool shops, restaurants and pubs. And the theater was, too.

Today, 30 years later, the Naro remains the cornerstone of Ghent and a hugely loved fixture in the community.

On Monday, Athens gets its own community cinema, Ciné. I know I speak for many when I say we've waited a long time for this day to come.

And what's especially wonderful about Ciné is its spirit of "community." Ciné itself reflects Athens, with the imprint of familiar artists and designers evident throughout the space, all in a building that's long been a fixture on W. Hancock Avenue, its history preserved in our midst.

More than that, the theater isn't just meant to fill a niche for cinephiles. It's dedicated to being a place for gathering people together. Founder/executive director Brigitta Hangartner and her crew have gone to great lengths in creating a beautiful space that features, in addition to state-of-the-art screening rooms, a lab for meetings, workshops and exhibitions and a bar/café all meant to draw us into conversing together, not just about films but about life.

"The idea," notes Carol John, local artist and co-owner of design/build firm D.O.C. Unlimited, which helped bring Ciné to life, "is building community. You can go (to Ciné) alone and end up being part of something."

In Sunday's Classic Living section of the Athens Banner-Herald, we'll meet Hangartner, the mastermind behind Ciné, and on Monday, Ciné's opening day, we'll learn about the building itself. Today, we take a look at the films showing during its opening week (Page 6).